This write up for the Norwegian film Thale might ultimately end up being a ‘provide your own ranking’ type of review – a first for me. I don’t want this to see like a cop-out at all but I feel like this is a film that is not universal by any means. It couples an interesting creature mythology with a wonderful buddy dynamic between the two male leads to create an interesting and ultimately charming story. However, the fantasy aspect and its relationship to the folklore of it are really the primary focus and not necessarily the horror underpinnings. So because of this, I could see a lot of folks really not get into it because it plays much more like a fairy tale than a horror/suspense story.
After viewing, I got to thinking about various myth and legend retelling and how the truer, rawer origins of them tend to get whitewashed over time and sanitized for children’s ears and eyes. Thale, instead, gets after the more honest and potentially dangerous aspects of fantastical stories and the creatures that inhabit them to weave its story.The film centers around two friends, Elvis (Erlend Nervold) and Leo (Jon Sigve Skard) who work as crime scene cleanup workers either through an independent agency or through the police force as a contractor. I was unclear on this. Anyway, they are called to a scene to cleanup afte...

From the 2012 debut thriller novel of biomedical scientist Erec Stebbins –The Ragnarök Conspiracy (www.ragnarokconspiracy.com) the reader takes to a world like shaken and stirred. This novel is about a Western terrorist organization attempting to instigate a global war with the Islamic world, a group of FBI and CIA agents work together to uncover and stop their plot. The Ragnarök Conspiracy follows two main characters, an “American Bin Laden” and an FBI agent, who both suffer a terrible loss on 9/11, but clash over how to respond to terrorist threats from radicalized Muslims.

It’s the story of two men who share a traumatic loss at the hands of Muslim extremists, and yet take two ultimately divergent paths afterwards. One man, John Savas, channels his pain to become one of the nation’s leading, if unorthodox, FBI counter-terrorism officers. The other uses his considerable wealth and power to become the equivalent of an American Osama bin Laden, and is the antagonist of the story who plans and sets in motion a global conflict with the Muslim world. Much like the final Armageddon of Norse mythology, these two are destined to face off in an ultimate battle over the soul of civilization and the fate of the world.